according to the relative position in the chain, would be beneficial. Sometimes though, as pointed out by Professor David Hughes at the APAC, you might be producing more product than the market can absorb and then you are pushing your product into the commodity area and will suffer the consequences. If demand is lower than supply then guess what? There is much work to do. VASEP’s statistics are interesting as they show that the European Union (EU) was the main importer of Vietnamese Pangasius last year with USD$385.4 million, although
EU imports fell by 9.4% year on year. Within the EU bloc, the largest importers of Pangasius were Spain (USD$76.7 million, down 11.6%), the Netherlands (USD$60 million, down 12.1%), Germany (USD$45.1 million, down 21.3%) and the United Kingdom (USD$40.6 million, up 13.2%). The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) imported USD$124.8 million, up 13.1% year on year. The main importers of this bloc were Singapore and Thailand, with imports amounting to USD$36.7 million (up 3.6%) and USD$34.2 mil-
lion (up 62.3%), respectively. Even Brazil imported Vietnamese Pangasius valued at USD$121.8 million in 2013, which represented an increase of 54% compared to 2012. Despite the difficulties in exporting to the US it was the second largest market for Vietnamese Pangasius, valued at USD$380.7 million, an increase of 6.1% compared with 2012. *Roy Palmer has been involved in the seafood industry since 1972. He is the current director of the World Aquaculture Society and collaborator of Aquaculture Magazine.
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